AIDY Boothroyd is looking forward to a Christmas bonus with five of his long-term Coventry City casualties poised to return for first-team action.

And the Coventry City boss is determined to keep his side in touch with the play-off positions so he can make full use of that mid-term selection boost.

But although the City boss admits their recoveries could play right into his hands, he said: “It is not something we have planned I can tell you that.

"It is just one of those things but it will be like having a load of new players coming back.”

Players due back in the next couple of months in the run up to the festive programme are striker Freddy Eastwood (knee), full-backs Chris Hussey (foot) and Stephen O’Halloran (back), and defensive midfielders Gary Deegan (ankle) and Isaac Osbourne (knee).

Hussey and O’Halloran are perhaps the most pressing pair given that they are the club’s only two recognised left-backs who have hardly kicked a ball between them this season.

O’Halloran, a summer signing from Aston Villa, is yet to pull on a competitive shirt as he bids to get through the latest set-back to his injury-ravaged career that has seen the 22-year-old make just 14 senior appearances to date.

Hussey was expected to step up to the first team plate this term following a tentative start to his City spell after joining from non-league AFC Wimbledon last January.

“Both Chris and Stephen have suffered injuries but that’s part and parcel of the season,” said Boothroyd.

“You are always going to get injuries and the thing to avoid is getting too many injuries to one position.

"The ideal is to have a squad of 22 players with two players for each position, but we have lost two left-backs and two boys who were going to be fighting it out for a first team spot.

“But that has opened the door for someone else and Martin Cranie has come in and considering we are ninth in the table and on the shirt tails of the leaders, that is part of what you have got to go through and deal with. You just have to ride with it and keep going.”

And the manager is confident the players will come back stronger for having gone through their individual injury nightmares, adding: “What it does is toughens them up and when a player has a long term injury there is a discipline and toughness required to come through it to get back to fitness again, and once you are back you hope they feel like they have never been away.

“But that added patience and ability to go through things is part of the development of a player.”

As well as making sure they return in good physical shape, Boothroyd has put in place a programme to ensure that they all come back in tune with their team-mates by knowing exactly what they do in different situations on the pitch.

"And that means spending time in the classroom as well as on the treatment table.

He explained: “Competition for places is good and everyone has seen that already, so we have got a lot of quality to draw on.

"But the important thing is that everyone fits into what we are trying to do and everyone has an understanding of the way we play and the collective decisions we make in different areas.

“We are fortunate because we have set up a system where those boys that are not fit to train all do their own rehab and treatment but they also do some other stuff like watching other people play and doing video work, and the idea is that we make their day quite full so that they don’t go to seed really.

“We make sure they are alive and feel part of it and that they are actually getting better as players mentally, but through other people’s experiences.

"All the lads want to play and you just hope they can do the work to get through it.”